In Remembrance
by Legitwit
Summary: A short little story I put together for remembrance/veterans day. Apart from my main story; salvation and redemption.


**Author's note: This is a short story I made for remembrance/veterans day.**

It was a cold November 11th, small flakes of snow dancing around the town cemetery, gently falling onto Flippy's hands. The graves, perfectly chiseled stone, the names of the loved and lost engraved in them. They stood solemn and tall in the morning darkness, assorting the dead into their identities and lives that they no longer had. The call of death had reached all of these people, weather through the succumbing of age or by more abrupt means. In the end, they were still in this yard, surrounding him, enveloping him in the lost. He was standing in front of a small set of graves, each belonging to a friend, each with a wreath of poppies leaning against the stone, placed on them by their families, all in remembrance.

Anyone else would have described the touch of the tombstones on their fingers as the same cold, solid, and empty feeling. Flippy would touch each one, and have the senses from every memory in service flood into his vision, touch, hearing, his taste, his sense of smell. It would turn the present into the events which would never leave him, the events that were sure to haunt him for the rest of his days.

Each tombstone would bring different feelings back. The first few he saw were of his less known squad mates. He could smell the smoke and burned flesh from the helicopter crash in an African village, here shouts of pain and gunshots, and how he wanted them to stop shooting, to stop screaming.

His eyes darted around, as he was back in the grave yard. The flashbacks were so vivid; he had to steady himself so as not to fall over. His eye caught the words engraved on the farthest grave to his right. Without even thinking he approached it and knelt down.

The grave brought back the Afghan desert, the hot sun and dry air, the sand blowing in his eyes, the stench of animals taking his nose. All of the times spent in his Middle Eastern campaign. This grave belonged to his friend Victor. Victor was at Flippy's side quite often out there in the desert, sticking with him through the worst of it. Until he died during a road side bombing, he was on the side of the truck nearest to the explosives. He had perished in a volley of smoke and fire, with Flippy never repaying the debt he still owed him for all the times Victor helped him. Though he tried unsuccessfully to fill the emptiness brought on by such a debt. He would often help out Victor's brother Melvin "the Mole" when he needed it. He got the nickname from when he had lost his eyes after being captured along with Flippy in the same attack that cost his brother's life. He had a hard time, and if Flippy couldn't do anything about Victor anymore, he could at the very least assist his brother.

The thought of the screaming at the compound where he and Melvin were held at froze him in place. The tortures, the interrogations, the beatings, the executions had all taken their toll. After being held there for a month, Flippy had finally lost it. The warden of the compound had moved many guards to ambush locations far away at the time, and so the compound was in no way prepared for Flippy's attack. He had used a sharpened piece of cinderblock to gut his cell guards, letting the crimson red liquid saturate their uniforms and their organs decorate the floorboards. Their faces permanently contorted in a grimace of pain. He didn't even touch their weapons. He then stalked around the compound, brutally and mercilessly killing any guards in sight. Not long after he had eliminated every single enemy, he was walking with Melvin to a rendezvous point. He could still remember the blood that coated his arms and legs, the fragments of skull and teeth that protruded out of his boots.

Flippy felt sadness lump in his throat, the cold feeling of death had surrounded him. The memories were not fading; he relived it all, of the people left burning alive from the misfire in the jungle, the piles of civilian bodies he had to wade through in Rwanda, the starving children begging and screaming for food, the crying, the killing. If the memories didn't appear then they would appear later in a dream. He hadn't realized how fast his heartbeat was nor had he realized the graveyard spinning around him.

Then the world around him changed, what was once a grey graveyard had turned into a tangle of red and white. He felt a vice-like grip around him. The cold air instantly warm.

"Flippy, Flippy?" a soft and nervous voice filled his ears melodically.

He looked up, and was greeted with the soft pale face of Flaky, but of course, who else could it have been?

Flaky knelt down and placed her forehead against his, looking straight into his eyes.

"Y-you okay?" she had her hands tightly gripping his, worry radiating off of her.

In reply, he pressed his lips against hers, letting her wrap her arms around him.

He placed his hands on the sides of her face, idly stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

"Sorry about that, I was just….. Remembering" he said, standing up.

"You have to let go of the bad memories, remember them for the kind of person they were, not by the way they died." she replied.

And Flippy knew she was right, though he knew that he would always remember. His respect would be forever standing for every single person who died doing their duty. He would never forget all of those who died in the many wars before, nor the ones who die today. It wasn't just in remembrance, it was also in thanks.

**Author's note: thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed! I promise to update salvation and redemption soon for those of you who are reading it.**


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